Wonders, Medicine, Giants, and Laughter
WonderS of the hebreW Language
WONDERS ImplIcIT AND ExplIcIT
I n this week’s parashah, we find the first instance of “wonder,” the namesake of our publication. After hearing that she, a 90-year-old woman, would give birth, Sarah laughed, but then denied it. God insisted that she had laughed and added, “Is anything hidden from God?”¹ (הֲיִפָּלֵא מֵי־הוה דָּבָר). The Hebrew word for hidden (פֶּלֶא) is oftentimes translated as “wonder” and this translation could work in this verse too: “Is anything too wondrous for God.” In either case, the root is פלא and it appears in the verse in third person inquisitive form, הֲיִפָּלֵא.
Perhaps the most wondrous thing is a paradox. Indeed, there are several roots in Hebrew that denote a thing and its opposite. One of them is our root: פלא.
On the one hand, the common meaning of this root is something that is hidden, covered, and concealed from intellectual grasp as in the verse, “If a matter is too baffling for you”² (כִּי יִפָּלֵא מִמְּךָ דָבָר). On the other hand, the root appears in the Torah also in the sense of an explicit and clear utterance, as in “when one explicitly utters a vow”³ (אִישׁ אוֹ אִשָּׁה כִּי יַפְלִא לִנְדֹּר)—to specify the vow.
But apart from these two meanings, which are opposites, there is another close three-letter-root פלה, which means “distinction” or “difference,” which lends its meaning to פלא. Wondrous then becomes a source of separation and distinction. For instance, in the words spoken by Moses to God, “Let Your people and me be distinct [ וְנִפְלֵינו] from every nation on the face of the earth”⁴ and then God’s response, “I hereby make a covenant; Before all your people I will perform wonders [נִפְלָאֹת] such as have not been performed on all the earth or for any nation.”⁵
On the one hand, the common meaning of pele is a thing that is hidden, covered, and concealed from intellectual grasp as in the verse, “If a matter is too baffling for you”⁶ (כִּי יִפָּלֵא מִמְּךָ דָבָר). On the other hand, the root appears in the Torah also in the sense of an explicit and clear utterance, as in “when one explicitly utters a vow”⁷ ( אִישׁ אוֹ אִשָּׁה כִּי יַפְלִא לִנְדֹּר)—to specify the vow.
But apart from these two meanings, which are opposites, there is another close three-letter-root פלה, which means “distinction” or “difference” and which lends its meaning to פלא. Wondrous then becomes a source of separation and distinction. For instance, in the words spoken by Moses to God, “Let Your people and me be distinct [ וְנִפְלֵינו] from every nation on the face of the earth”⁸ and then God’s response, “I hereby make a covenant; Before all your people I will perform wonders [נִפְלָאֹת] such as have not been performed on all the earth or for any nation.”⁹
In all, we have three meanings of פלא, which follow the foundational model of development from the Ba’al Shem Tov known as submission, separation, and sweetening (הַכְנָעָה הַבְדָּלָה הַמְתָּקָה). This model is also represented by the three terms: silence ( חָשׁ ), separation (מַל), and speech (מַל).¹⁰
The first meaning where פלא refers to something that is covered or concealed because the mind cannot fathom or grasp it corresponds to the submission, which is also described as “silence” (chash,).
The second, intermediate meaning, which connects פלא with the root פלה and distinction obviously corresponds to separation (mal, מַל). In Jewish philosophy, we find this meaning used in the Ra’avad’s identification of the 32nd pathway of wisdom as “wondrous intellect” (שֵׂכֶל מֻפְלָא), a logic that is separate and set apart from common sense.
Finaly, the third meaning of פלא, as that which is open and explicit, corresponds with sweetening (mal, מַל). This meaning suggests that the goal of the ungraspable wonders is to ultimately be revealed. This idea is captured beautifully in the verse chosen by Rav Ginsburgh to name the organization that publishes his teachings, “Open my eyes [גַּל עֵינַי, Gal Einai], that I may behold the wonders of your Torah.”¹¹ Not only is the Torah’s wondrous inner dimension meant to be revealed, but it also has the power to truly heal and sweeten reality.
You may have noticed that the letters of פלא are the same letters as the name of the letter alef ( אָלֶף ),א . The Lubavitcher Rebbe connected these two words with the idea that the wonders of the crown and the superconscious dimension of Torah, which are both above reason and knowledge, are described as “wonder” (פֶּלֶא). When the supernal wonder seeks to be revealed in the conscious mind, it turns from wonder (פֶּלֶא) to alef (אָלֶף). The letter alef means “to teach” or “train,” for example “I will teach you wisdom” (אֲאַלֶּפְךָ חָכְמָה). Another well-known connection between alef and teaching is the word Ulpan (אֻלְפָּן), indicating a study hall, or in modern times, a place where one studies Hebrew, which understandably seems both wondrous and baffling to the uninitiated.
One of the more interesting occurrences of this root פלא in the Bible is in the verse describing the Mashiach, “For a child has been born to us…he will be named, ‘wondrous advisor….’”¹² The wondrous advisor is actually a doctor (specifically a healer of the spirit, what today would be called a psychologist). Every time we visit the restroom to relive ourselves, we recite the blessing known as Asher Yatzar, thanking God for giving our bodies health. The final words of the blessing are, “He who heels all flesh and acts wondrously” (רוֹפֵא כָּל בָּשָׂר וּמַפְלִיא לַעֲשׂוֹת), revealing that health and healing cannot be taken for granted because they are an act of wonder. Amazingly, the value of “wondrous advisor” (פֶּלֶא יוֹעֵץ) is the same as the value of “doctor” (רוֹפֵא), 287.
This leads us directly to our next topic.
mEDIcINE, DOcTORS, AND HEAlINg
O ne of the densest and richest topics in Torah and in life in general is medicine, healing, and the role of doctors.¹³ How do you say doctor in Hebrew? Rofe (רוֹפֵא). How do you say medicine? Terufah (תְּרוּפָה) if you mean the substance taken to heal, or Refu’ah (רְפוּאָה) if you mean the practice of medicine. It is easy to see that these all come from the same root, רפא. This root first appears in parashat Vayeira in the verse, “Abraham prayed to God and God healed Avimlech, his wife and bondwomen so that they relived themselves”¹⁴ (וַיִּתְפַּלֵּל אַבְרָהָם אֶל הָאֱ־לֹהִים וַיִּרְפָּא אֱ־לֹהִים אֶת אֲבִימֶלֶךְ וְאֶת אִשְׁתּו ).וְאַמְהֹתָיו וַיֵּלֵדוּ
In the entire Penateuch, the Five Books of Moses, this root appears 14 times, alluding to the word “hand” (יָד) whose value is 14. Thus, we have an idiom of sorts, “the physician’s hand” ( יַד הָרוֹפֵא )— suggesting that there is healing power in the physician’s hand.¹⁵ There is even a direct reference to this in the story of Na’aman, the commander of the army of Aram, who was stricken with leprosy. He came to the prophet Elisha who told him to immerse seven times in the Jordan River. Na’aman initially walked away with anger saying, “I thought he [Elisha] would come out to me and would stand and invoke God, his God, by Name, and wave his hand toward the place and cure the affected part.”¹⁶ Incidentally, the value of “hand” (יָד), 14, is an allusion to the 14 phalanges or finger bones in the hand.
The letters of the Hebrew word for “healing” (רְפוּאָה) permute to spell the phrase, “the light of the mouth” (אוֹר פֶּה). The sympathetic words that come out of the physician’s mouth provide reassurance to the patient by radiating healing light and energy. It should come as no surprise that the angel associated with healing is called Rephael (רְפָאֵל), as its root is also רפא.
As we saw in our exploration of the Torah’s first word¹⁷ “In the beginning, God created,” we saw that there are indeed two stages of creation: first, creation ex nihilo, and then, a “healing” of the ailments inherent in the initial state of creation; both are derivatives of the Torah’s first word, which is related to both “creation” (בְּרִיאָה) and “healthy” (בָּרִיא). God created/ healed the world with Ten Sayings that, as it were, came out of His mouth. The first explicit utterance is recorded in the Torah’s third verse “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” God’s very words, “Let there be light,” became light. Light was the first phonetic element in reality emerging His mouth, as it were, healing the previous “ill” state of reality. With the goodly light of His mouth, God healed all of reality. And so is every man, and the physician in particular, instructed, “Open your mouth, and let your words shine light.”¹⁸
When we consult Rabbi David Kimchi’s medieval work on the Hebrew roots, we find that under this root רפא, he includes two additional meanings: giants and the deceased. Regarding the giants he quotes, “For only King Og of Bashan was left from the remnant of the Rephaim; behold, his bed was of iron and indeed was preserved in Rabbah of the Ammonites, it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide, according to the cubit of a [normal] man”¹⁹ which would make his bed about 4.3 meters long and 1.9 meters wide (14.2 feet by 6.3 feet). He also quotes the verse, “Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai a descendant of the Rephaim….”²⁰
However, the very same word, Rephaim, also means those that are deceased, as in the verse, “Do you work wonders for the dead; will the Rephaim [dead] rise to praise You?”²¹ (note the appearance of the first root we discussed, פלא, in the verse!).
Now we need to inquire: what is the connection between healing, giants, and the deceased? The answer is that the use of Rephaim (רְפָאִים) to describe the deceased stems from a surprising connection between medicine (רְפוּאָה), stemming from the root רפא, and the notion that healing is related to relaxation (הַרְפָּיָה), which in Hebrew stems from a related root, רפה. However, if relaxation goes too far, it leads to the opposite of life. Thus, Rephaim in the sense of the deceased are those who are relaxing without end, unable to serve God anymore.
gIANTS, cOmpASSION, AND cRUElTY
W of giants. One explanation is that
hat about Rephaim in the sense
Rephaim was the name of the tribe of giants who all died (the last of their kind was Og, who was also the fugitive who came to Abraham the Hebrew, one of the words we looked at last week²²). Because this tribe had all been wiped out, they were named Rephaim, as in “deceased.” The Chasidic explanation is based on a seminal section in the Zohar.
The Ba’al Shem Tov says that a physician (רוֹפֵא) is one who transforms a sickbed ( עֶרֶשׂ ) into wealth (עֹשֶׁר), distress (צָרָה) into a window [of light and hope] (צֹהַר), and an affliction (נֶגַע) into pleasure (עֹנֶג). This underscores the fact that our root רפא means both health and death—it is one of the Hebrew roots with paradoxical meanings. Some people mistakenly think that Erev Rav refers to specific individuals—evil people who have infiltrated Judaism with the purpose of destroying it. However, Chasidut, particularly the Ba’al Shem Tov, rejects this idea and explains that the Erev Rav, true to its name is a psychological confusion or affliction that has entered the minds of all Jews. This confusion or affliction needs to be healed.
The Zohar explains that there are five types of Erev Rav, five types of psychological confusion in the mind and their acronym is “evil affliction” ( נֶגַע רַע ), the letters of which are the initials of Nefilim, Gibborim, Anakim, Rephaim, and Amalekim. The value of Erev Rav ( עֵרֵב רַב) is the same as “knowledge” or “consciousness” ( דָּעַת), indicating t hat t hes e af f lic t ions exist w it hin every psychological illness as negative emotional character traits that stem from consciousness, just as the emotive sefirot stem from the sefirah of knowledge. The correspondence here is a bit irregular, as there are only five negative character traits and 7 emotive sefirot, but the point is that the entire right axis is treated as one and the entire left axis is counted together as one. Thus, we have: the right axis, the left axis, and the three sefirot of the middle axis: beauty (whose inner experience is compassion), foundation (fulfillment), and kingdom (lowliness). The Anakim correspond to the right axis, the Gibborim to the left axis, Rephaim correspond to beauty (tiferet) whose grammatical root is פאר,—a permutation of the root of medicine, רפא. Clearly then, we have now added that practicing medicine is one of the greatest acts of compassion we can do for our fellow humans. All healing begins with an awakening of compassion and concludes with the actual, practical application of compassion. The Rephaim, the giants who battled the Israelites on many occasions thus represent the unholy counterpart of the Jewish attribute of compassion. Evidently, the Rephaim, whose lineage ends with Og, King of Bashan, represent the exact opposite of compassion: cruelty in the soul.
Just to complete the model, the Nefilim corresp ond to foundation and the Amalekim to kingdom.
ISAAc, lAUgHTER, AND THE lAND Of ISRAEl
A God revealed to Abraham that
t the end of parashat Lech Lecha,
Sarah would give birth to a son. Abraham immediately threw himself on his face before God and laughed with joy.²³ God then instructs him to name the child “Isaac,” which literally means “he will laugh.” This is incidentally the very first time the root of laughter, צחק, appears in the Torah. In our parashah, Sarah also hears of her upcoming pregnancy and responds with laughter.²⁴ Abraham indeed names his son Isaac, or Yitzchak (יִצְחָק) in Hebrew,²⁵ which Sarah then supplements by exclaiming: “God has brought laughter for me; whoever hears will laugh for me.”²⁶ Isaac’s name and his very identity are intimately bound to his parents’ experience. Later, in the Prophets and in the Writings,²⁷ Isaac’s name also appears in another form, which is closer to the English pronunciation: יִשְׂחָק (pronounced: Yischak). Note that the letter tzaddik (צ) has been replaced with the left-sided shin (ש). Indeed, these two letters share the same origin of speech in the vocal organs, a great opportunity to introduce this important topic.
Already Sefer Yetzirah, the earliest work on the Hebrew language and the first book of Kabbalah, provides us with five origins of speech ( ה מוֹצְאוֹת הַפֶּה ), which, to use the English terms, can be identified as: glottal (throat), palatal (mout h), a lve olar (tongue), dent a l (teeth), and bilabial (lips). Modern phonetics refers to these as “places of articulation,” and as is prevalent, divides the five into 11 or more sub-locations, but in principle the same structure is retained. The letters tzaddik and shin both belong to the dental origin—the letters formed primarily by the teeth. Letters that share the same origin are commonly found to interchange. This is one of the principles behind the phonetic analysis of language.
A rabbinic tradition regarding the four letters of Isaac’s Hebrew name (יִצְחָק) is discussed in the Midrash.²⁸ The yud, whose value is 10, represents the ten trials endured by Abraham.²⁹ The tzaddik, whose value is 90, represents Sarah’s age when she gave birth to Isaac. The chet, whose value is 8, symbolizes Isaac’s circumcision on the eighth day. Isaac, in fact, was the first person to be circumcised on the eighth day, as God had commanded Abraham.³⁰ The final letter of Isaac’s name, kuf, whose value is 100, alludes Abraham’s age when Isaac was born.³¹ Thus, we see in Isaac’s name that he was truly a son of Abraham and Sarah in every way.
ISAAc AND THE lAND Of ISRAEl
O (יִצְחָק) never left the Land of Israel,
f the three patriarchs, only Isaac
Eretz Yisrael. In fact, God specifically commanded him not to leave the land.³² A beautiful hint to his special affinity to the Holy Land is that the four letters of his name are also the first letters of four different terms by which the land is known.
The first letter of his name, yud, stands for “Israel” ( י שְׂרָאֵלִ ), the common name for the Land of Israel for thousands of years. The second letter tzaddik is the initial of “deer” ( צ בִיְ ), one of the Biblical connotations for the Land of Israel.³³ One of the reasons for this connotation is that after removal, the skin of a deer shrinks and can no longer cover it. Likewise, when the Jewish people live in the land it expands to contain them all, but if they are exiled, the land as it were shrinks and cannot contain those who try to replace the Jews. Another reason is that the deer is considered one of the most beautiful animals, just like the land of Israel is beautiful. Finally, the dear is considered the lightest (i.e., fastest) of all the animals and the Land of Israel is quickest to ripen its fruit.
The third letter chet stands for “life” ( ח יִּיםַ ), referring to the connotation “Land of Life” for the Land of Israel.³⁴ The final letter, a kuf, is the initial letter of “holy” ( ק דֶש ) and the Land of Israel is well-known as the Holy Land ( אֶרֶץ הַקֹּדֶש). All four of the letters in Isaac’s Hebrew name thus demonstrate his deep attachment to the Land of Israel.
1. Genesis 18:14.
2. Deuteronomy 17:8.
3. Numbers 6:2.
4. Exodus 33:17.
5. Ibid. 34:10.
6. Deuteronomy 17:8.
7. Numbers 6:2.
8. Exodus 33:17.
9. Ibid. 34:10.
10. Initially, the Ba’al Shem Tov introduced this model to provide a guide for how to rectify our speech. Human speech is the breath of life God breathed into Adam. Speech is natural for humans, but it is also weighed down by the coarseness of our ego. By first silencing ourselves, then separating out our ego’s influence, our speech can reflect its Divine origin (see Keter Shem Tov [Kehot edition], 28).
11. Psalms 119:18.
12. Isaiah 9:5.
13. See our volume Body, Mind, and Soul.
14. Genesis 20:17.
15. See Body, Mind, and Soul for the healing that is found in the doctor’s eyes and in his selflessness.
16. 2 Kings 5:11.
17. Wonders issue 215 (Bereishit 5787), p. 5.
18. Berachot 22a. Words that shine light are the words of Torah for they cannot be defiled. Just like God’s shining of light, our words of Torah shine in any environment or psychological state.
19. Deuteronomy 3:11.
20. 1 Chronicles 20:4 see also the rest of the chapter in Chronicles.
21. Psalms 88:11.
22. Wonders issue 216 for parashat Lech Lecha 5787.
23. Genesis 17:17.
24. Ibid. 18:12.
25. Ibid. 21:3.
26. Ibid. 21:6.
27. Jeremiah 33:26, Amos 7:16, and Psalms 105:9.
28. Bereishit Rabbah 53:7.
29. The Hebrew Letters, p. 291.
30. Genesis 21:4.
31. The Hebrew Letters, loc. cit.
32. Genesis 26:2-3.
33. Ezekiel 26:15 and 20. See also Daniel 11:16 and 41, where it is called “the Land of the Deer.”
34. Isaiah 53:8, Jeremiah 11:19, Ezekiel 32:23, Psalms 27:13, and more.
